Thanks for the replies. Yup, Win 7 is retail, used on a PC I assembled. I have the original disc w/product key. In fact, that box is one of the ones I'm considering upgrading to Win 10. But upgrade or clean Win 7 install + upgrade, it sounds like I'm good, provided I take down the VM. Pls correct me if I'm wrong, and thanks again!

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Thanks for the replies. Yup, Win 7 is retail, used on a PC I assembled. I have the original disc w/product key. In fact, that box is one of the ones I'm considering upgrading to Win 10. But upgrade or clean Win 7 install + upgrade, it sounds like I'm good, provided I take down the VM. Pls correct me if I'm wrong, and thanks again!

You can just install Windows 10 direct and use 7 key to upgrade. No need to go through nightmare of installing Windows 7 and upgrading.

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Hi folks
old Windows keys (legit retail w7 / W8 /W8.1 all editions except enterprise still work if you want to install W10 from new again.

For moving a VM --this could work

1) image the VM with macrium i.e run it within the VM.
2) define a new VM with whatever VM software you want to use
3) restore the backed up image to the new virtual disk defined in your VM
4) macrium allows restore to different hardware -- won't be a lot different in the case of a VM.
4) when powering on the VM for the first time say you MOVED rather than COPIED it -- this should preserve activation.

Note I've done this several times with VMware VM's -- but it's worth having a go even with a parallels vm that you have restored to a windows machine -- the virtual hardware for para virtualised machines will surely not be too different whether vbox, VMware or even HYPER-V.

If it doesn't work you won't have lost anything.

Cheers
jimbo

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